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Born in Brentford, England, Herbert qualified as an accountant and first got involved in the music industry in 1985. He took a liking to Matt and Luke Goss, twin friends of his son Chris when they were pupils together at Collingwood School in Camberley, Surrey. Although the twins were only 15, they had formed their own pop group called Gloss with the bassist Craig Logan. Realising the blond looks of Matt and Luke could be exploited to market a group that could be the Eighties' answer to the Bay City Rollers, Herbert offered Gloss advice and provided rehearsal space for them in his summer house. He introduced them to songwriters, financed their early demo tapes and plotted their route to success.

"The whole teen-band scene at the time was saturated by boy bands like 'Take That' and the 'Backstreet Boys'. That was all a bit of a yawn for me, and only appealed to female audiences...I felt if you could appeal to the boys as well, you'd be laughing."

In March 1994, the girls didn't agree with Chris Herbert's idea to dress them all the same and sing cover versions of other artists, thus leaving the management with a backlog of their own written materials.

In 1997, the Herberts reverted to their original boy-band masterplan which subsequently formed five:

"We decided to put an ad in The Stage newspaper, as we had done when we were auditioning for the Spice Girls. Up until then, no-one knew that we'd put the Spice Girls together and suddenly, it hit the press: the media went crazy for the auditions. The headlines read: `Spice Boys Wanted, Boy Power!' We were being talked about on every TV and radio station. Thousands of lads turned up. It was madness." - Five: The Official Book (1998)

Chris Herbert also commenting on the same prospects as his father of finding a girl group :

"There are a lot of boy groups around at the moment. Umm... and we thought it was time to sort of get together a white girl singing, dancing group beacause there is just a need for it." - Spice Girls's documentary Raw Spice.